"They are still at the Fiji police headquarters, with the commissioner of police, waiting to be given to the constituent assembly if and when the president decides to do so."

Colonel Tikoitoga says the copies were confiscated because Yash Ghai overstepped his authority.

"The Constitution Commission Decree legislates that he was to gather information from the people, write a draft constitution and present the draft constitution to the president," he said.

"The president will give it to the Constituent Assembly, who will then...print them and distribute them to the Constituent Assembly for discussion.

"At no stage in the decree was Yash Ghai given that responsibility and it would have been premature for Yash Ghai to distribute the copies because the constituent assembly has not been nominated, nor have they had the chance to go through the draft constitution."

Constitution concerns

The confiscation has raised concerns about the process of developing a draft constitution.

Amnesty International's Kate Schutze says not making the draft document generally available is a significant human rights issue.

"Their actions recently with not allowing the draft to be public are quite concerning, because that would contradict what they're saying about openness and transparency.

"If you want a constitution to be legitimised by the people, you need to start having those discussions, and the sooner the government is willing to have that discussion with the people of Fiji, the sooner progress will be made on moving forward."

Fijian political activist Shamima Ali says she is concerned the reports may derail the constitution process.

"A lot of people have come on board - people who actually did not believe in the process but participated because they saw this as a way forward," she said.

"However much we criticised it...this seemed to us to be the only way out - and we have gone in in good faith...and now we are now questioning the intentions of such actions and whether there is a true commitment, as the regime has said before, to taking us forward."

Fijian historian and academic Brij Lal says the actions of police will not prevent those who are interested from reading the draft constitution.

He says the document is available online - but many Fijians may not yet know what has transpired with the printed versions.

"None of this has been reported at all in the print media or the radio and so on," he said.

"So the vast majority of people who don't have access to internet will not know what has transpired, so keeping it secret from those people may be one intention of the regime."

Process 'hijacked'

Meanwhile, a youth activist says police raided his house in the early hours of Monday morning, demanding that he remove comments on the social media site Facebook which criticised the confiscation of copies of the constitution.

Peter Waqavonovono told Pacific Beat this is the sort of pressure facing many people in Fiji who are opposed to the coup-installed military government.

"We know that they are monitoring us. We know that on the national level there's a high security alert."

He says Fijians entered the process of drafting a new constitution with "guided optimism, but now optimism has turned really sour".

"We personally feel that, we as a nation, we were forced into this whole process. We were cornered and made to actually participate.

"And so when people participate, their views have been taken down...[The Constitution Commission] actually took a very fair, balanced document to the president and now the police have just gone forward without the president's authority of course, and it's just sad.

"I hope that this process that's been designed through the Constituent Assembly, I hope that process does not get hijacked like the other different forums that have been created in the past."